Service Oriented Architecture Field Guide for Executives

10.1. MULTISTAGE TRAINING PROGRAM

Instead of one huge and continuous training program, a multistage plan that educates employees in small chunks has many advantages. Some of the advantages are traditional. It is easier for people to digest small amounts of information and use them in real life before they are ready for the next level. Financially speaking, a stepped approach will help you spread out the training dollars over several quarters. Some of the other advantages are purely SOA specific. An organization goes through a series of SOA maturity levels. It makes sense to have a training program that matches the current maturity level of the company while a small number of avant-garde employees get trained for the next level (Exhibit 10.1).

Figure 10.1. As the organization becomes more mature about SOA, the general nature of the training changes

Personal familiarity with SOA also affects the type of training one needs. Someone who is completely new to SOA needs to understand what SOA is and learn about the benefits SOA can bring. Someone who already knows the basics needs to become an expert in the methodology and technology of SOA. In this chapter, wherever possible, we will describe a stepped training plan for each role. Each level of the step will become more vendor specific and less abstract (Exhibit 10.2). Abstract education deals with the nature of SOA and the methodology ...